Beauty & the Ugliness of Imperfection

After receiving an increased influx of praise from so many of you recently. I have this overwhelming need for you all to truly understand this next sentence. I am far, far from perfect.

Yes, I preach to you all. I echo the samurai standard to which we must all hold ourselves. I talk about things like greatness. And perfection. And the right decisions that we must make in order to be happy. Or to be successful. Or to feel good about ourselves. And how me must do these things to follow the Path.

And I believe it all. All the way to the core of who I am.

But I am still flawed.

Unfortunately…I’m severely flawed. As flawed, if not more so, than you or anyone you know.

We are all flawed.

There is beauty in imperfection though, right? So we’re good then, right? We should be proud of being imperfect. We should embrace our imperfections.

Well, that’s what we’re told. And sold. And we buy it. Because it helps us sleep easier at night. Because it truly makes us feel better about ourselves.

But that’s not true. That thinking is as flawed as our imperfect selves.

This ‘beauty’ of imperfection, most times feels really ugly to the person living in it. And with the host of issues they create, our imperfections can make us feel really badly about ourselves. They can be debilitating. They can put up ceilings to our potential. And roadblocks to our dreams.

And oftentimes to the people living next to the people with imperfections…it’s even worse. These flaws can be grotesque. They can be the reasons that our most cherished relationships disintegrate.

This is the ugliness in imperfection. There is very little beauty there. That is the truth.

Do not mistake, though, your differences. The things that make you unique. For imperfections.

A lot of people have this very narrow view of what a perfect person is. They have this vision of the lives that these perfect people are supposed to lead. How they are supposed to act. The direction in life they are supposed to take.

This is your parents. This is your friends. This is the media. This is anyone willing to share their view of what life should be like. Whether knowingly or not, they heap their views on you.

You are not that perfect person. You could never be that perfect person. Because most people can only see the perfect version of themselves. And you are obviously not them.

So to them. Your differences. Make you imperfect.

But there is not one singular perfect type of person in this world. There is no single skill set. No single Holy Grail. No single Way. There are over 7 billion different versions of perfection. One for each individual on this planet.

We can all become the best version of ourselves. The perfect version. Filled with highlighting and accentuating all these differences we have. Building our lives in and around these differences.These things that make us truly one-of-a-kind.

Our differences are what make us special. These are the things we must embrace. And cherish. And hold onto for dear life.

Our imperfections are the things that stand in our way. They stop us from putting the best version of ourselves out there in this world.

And we are all imperfect. All of us.

But if we sit here and say all these imperfections are beautiful. We won’t do much, but bask in our ugliness. Claiming to admire the very things that keep us miserable deep down.

To get where we want to go in this world, our flaws must be worked on. And bettered. And sometimes completely solved.

You don’t even need to reach perfection. The process of going after it, alone, is enough. Bettering yourself. The true and unwaivering effort to become the perfect you. That, is enough.